The A word

The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism has released its Final Report — two years in the making — on what co-chair and former Lib MP Mario Silva refers to as the “wave of anti-Semitism we are witnessing in our nation.” A 71% increase.

Scott Reid: “No, no, no, no, absolutely not. No, it’s funny, I’ve heard people who have criticized us saying that we think this but no there is absolutely no spike in the kinds of anti-Semitic incidents that I think appall us.”

Yet there were both Reid and Silva on Thursday, gravely intoning at their presser about the need for government to get involved because “Canada is witnessing an unprecedented increase in anti-Semitic incidents and hateful discourse.”

What? Just since December?

Well no, because we’re talking “the new anti-Semitism” here, or, as Silva puts it: “demonizing Israel as an apartheid state.”

Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, the report explains, unless you use the word “apartheid” to refer to its [current right wing] government[‘s policies].

As in “Israel Apartheid Week.”

Especially on campus, where the first Israeli Apartheid Week in the world was held in Toronto in 2005, a movement now gone global.

Twenty-one of the report’s 80 pages are devoted to the”new anti-Semitism” on campus, as well as its progenitors — various lefty or clueless profs and administrators. And it has recommendations:

All university staff and students should be encouraged to document and report antisemitic incidents whenever they occur.

We recommend that professors be held accountable for academic rigour of their curricula.

We recommend that Federal Government and/or the Inquiry work with the provinces to help administrators develop suitable tools and structures to deal with this burgeoning problem in an effective and principled manner.

On law enforcement: The Inquiry Panel recommends that police forces across Canada send their officers to the “Tools for Tolerance” program at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA.

On funding NGOs to do monitoring :

We recommend the creation of a permanent, publicly accessible “ambassadorial” position under the auspices of the most appropriate Department (Foreign Affairs, Justice, Multiculturalism) to develop and implement policies, projects and research on combating antisemitism, including the provision of funds to NGOs to further these aims. This office should also monitor implementation of priority recommendations and ensure compliance and accountability.

The second and third highest percentage of hate crimes were “minor assaults (13%), in which little to no physical harm was caused to the victim, and uttering threats (10%)”

All the other hate crime categories were around 1 or 2%.

There were 283 hate crimes targeting Jews reported to police in 2009.

“In 2009, hate crime rates were generally highest among youth and young adults. For both victims and persons accused of police-reported hate crime in 2009, the rate peaked among those aged 12 to 17 years and generally decreased with increasing age.”

Teenagers and hateful graffiti.

Meanwhile 100s of unnamed First Nations women have been kidnapped, beaten, and killed.

No special $½-million committee for them. No Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Aboriginal Death on the world stage for them.

“We had a number of donors who donated on condition of anonymity and uh the uh we passed a bylaw to ensure that no donations from groups such for example advocacy groups, from trade unions, from businesses would be accepted. These were all individual donations .”

I’ll bet. And after all that, you still haven’t come up with a reasonable definition of your new anti-Semitism.

Comments

Interesting. Jimmy Carter wrote a book titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, so I guess he’s an anti-semite? Harper has a talent for legislatively increasing the number of bad guys, like when he raised the age of consent to 16 and increased the number of pederasts in the country. Now he wants to increase the number of ‘hate crimes’.

First they came for those who liked to have sex with very young women, but I didn’t say anything because I don’t have sex with very young women, and besides, I really didn’t think I’d be second on the list of this take on Niemöller’s famous statement about the importance of speaking out against Nazis. I mean, aren’t you supposed to get three groups before they come for you?

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